


Notes from under Starkadh

by Slant



Series: Other Fionavars [2]
Category: The Fionavar Tapestry - Guy Gavriel Kay, Записки из подполья - Фёдор Достое́вский | Notes from Underground - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-19
Updated: 2016-06-19
Packaged: 2018-07-16 00:35:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7245103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slant/pseuds/Slant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I gave Jennifer the horrifying unstoppable spite-drive of the Underground Man and she's still the sum of what men and men-like things do to her. Ugh.</p></blockquote>





	Notes from under Starkadh

He left her with the dwarf, in the dark, without will or pride or spur of hope to cling to. Only this to live for: that he said she must die by morning. 

"I will live until morning," Jennifer resolved; there was no thought behind it, no plan, no hope or pride to resist the dark; only this rationalisation as her concious mind caught up with a decision already made.  
"I will do it out of spite."  
Spite served well in the dark. No glimmer of pride, no dream of hope was possible, but the hateful insistence that, at whatever it may cost, those around you should suffer some small inconvenience; that brutal instinct thrived beneath Starkadh.

***

On Earth she endured the pains of pregnancy with malicious patience. In Fionavar, she gave birth to her son in agony and rancour, and realised that she could not love him. For hate's sake, she gave him up to warmth and love and family. 

Paul, suicidal and god-ridden saw and supported her through it all. Maybe he even understood.

***

She met Arthur, and knew revelation. Knew the pattern of their lives and knew that the pattern was broken, for the other was not here, and she could not bear the king, for Rakoth lay between them.

***

She met Lancelot, who Rakoth had never been, and felt old love from a thousand other lives, felt bitterness came crawling up from her gut in response. To love him the more was a surrender to what was done to her. 

"I am a sick woman." She told him, "I am a spiteful woman."  
He said something vacuous about fair damsels. She ignored him.   
"I believe my emotions are disordered. I know everything that it is possible to know about my emotional state, and I shall see no therapist about it. It is not that I do not believe in therapy, but my state is such that I do not want to improve it. My mind is sick? Well, let it get worse."  
"You are one of my great loves, and I could be very happily your lady fair." She said it lightly, and paused.  
"I refuse." she said in a tone the booked no debate.

**Author's Note:**

> I gave Jennifer the horrifying unstoppable spite-drive of the Underground Man and she's still the sum of what men and men-like things do to her. Ugh.


End file.
